Twin Peaks Tunnel closure compounds Muni driver shortage

1of 4Muni commuters coming off the L Taravel bus head into the Castro station on Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018 in San Francisco, Calif.Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

2of 4Signs let commuters of K, L, and M bus lines to switch at the Metro Castro Station on Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018 in San Francisco, Calif.Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

3of 4Commuters getting off the L, K, and M bus lines switch at the Metro Castro Station on Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018 in San Francisco, Calif. Commuters heading in from the western neighborhoods get off the shuttle buses that are looping around the Twin Peaks Tunnel which is closed for repairs.Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

4of 4Commuters getting off the L Church station bus walk to the Metro Castro Station on Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018 in San Francisco, Calif. Commuters heading in from the western neighborhoods get off the shuttle buses that are looping around the Twin Peaks Tunnel which is closed for repairs.Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

Bus delays, always a burden for residents trying to get around San Francisco, got worse after the Municipal Transportation Agency closed the Twin Peaks Tunnel for repairs in June.

The shutdown of a crucial link between downtown and the west side required the agency to pluck drivers from popular Muni bus lines and reassign them to shuttles that loop around the tunnel — causing an increase in delays as the average number of missed bus runs on weekdays increased fivefold.

Muni officials say there’s little they can do to speed up service while the project continues, as they’re also grappling with a chronic shortage of drivers. The city’s transit agency has struggled for years to recruit and pump people through its training courses, and to retain drivers who grow weary of abuse from fed-up passengers.

“Has it gotten worse? Oh, absolutely,” said Roger Marenco, a bus driver and president of the Transport Workers Union.

That’s little comfort to the San Franciscans who depend on Muni each day, or to the City Hall politicians who field complaints from their constituents whenever the bus system sputters.

“I’m hearing from my constituents that they can’t rely on Muni to get their kids to school or to get to their doctors’ appointments on time,” said Supervisor Vallie Brown, who represents the Fillmore and Western Addition, Hayes Valley, Lower Haight, Haight-Ashbury and Japantown. She recently called for a hearing to address problems with the bus system, which got so bad that Muni officials issued a public apology to riders.

Entertainer Christopher Preston (left) watches as commuters come from buses heading into the Metro Castro Station on Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018 in San Francisco, Calif. Commuters heading in from the western neighborhoods get off the shuttle buses that are looping around the Twin Peaks Tunnel which is closed for repairs.

Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

Marenco accused Muni of failing to adequately prepare for a disruption its top brass knew was inevitable. He suggested the bus system’s managers should have consulted drivers before drafting a service plan, “because we know what’s going on at an hourly basis.”

John Haley, the SFMTA’s director of transit operations, acknowledged the driver shortfall in an internal memo in October, saying it was leaving bus routes open, squeezing light-rail service, and forcing staff to work overtime. The memo was first reported by the San Francisco Examiner.

Demand for drivers has risen as the number of drivers Muni employs has fallen. At the time of Haley’s memo, the transit system needed 2,230 drivers for its buses, light-rail vehicles, trolleys and cable cars, and it was short 159. With the tunnel closure, Muni needs 2,260 drivers, and its deficit has grown to 245, said SFMTA spokeswoman Erica Kato.

Still, the agency’s director, Ed Reiskin, downplayed the worker shortage during a recent interview with The Chronicle. He said the Twin Peaks Tunnel closure came at an inopportune moment, right as Muni was training workers to drive a new fleet of German light-rail cars.

Though he said Muni’s problems are temporary, records obtained by The Chronicle show that dozens of lines are running fewer buses.

Marenco said he felt the effects of this summer’s patchwork-service plan on a recent weekday morning, when he was marooned for 35 minutes at Geary and Powell streets, waiting for the 38 bus.

“That’s a bus that’s supposed to come every eight minutes,” he said.

Most transportation officials view the Twin Peaks Tunnel shutdown as short-term pain for long-term benefits: After 100 years of ferrying streetcars and light-rail trains, the 2.3-mile stretch needed new tracks, better drainage systems, and a structural retrofit to keep it standing in the next earthquake.

“You can’t do something this big without affecting the whole system,” Haley said. “You’re talking about the heart of the rail system, and the rail system is the heart of the overall system.”

During the two-month construction period between June 25 and Aug. 24, Muni is running shuttle buses to serve riders who would otherwise take the K, L and M light rail through the tube, to get to the Sunset and surrounding neighborhoods. SFMTA filched drivers from other popular lines — including the 38-Geary and the 14-Mission — to drive those shuttles.

As summer wore on, the strain started to show. SFMTA measures service gaps by the number of “runs” missed in a day — in bus-speak, a “run” is a driver’s daily assignment. According to the agency’s records, the average number of missed runs jumped to 168 on weekdays in July — up significantly from last year’s average of 34.

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For some dates, that number grew more than sevenfold. On July 10, for instance, Muni missed 169 runs throughout its system — up from 26 on the same date last year. And on July 18, the system missed 156 runs, compared with 20 last year.

Riders say they’ve noticed changes: longer gaps between buses, bigger crowds and occasional bunching, meaning two or three buses arrive at the same time.

“The buses have been a lot more crowded,” said Benjamin Josloff, 25, waiting for the 38 on Geary near Powell Street on a wind-whipped Thursday night.

Nearby on Kearny Street, a man glanced anxiously at a bus-scheduling app on his cell phone, which said the 45-Union was supposed to arrive in seven minutes. “But it said the same thing 10 minutes ago,” he grumbled.

Brown, the Fillmore district supervisor, said that she’s been snowed with calls and emails about Muni delays, and that people have approached her to vent their frustrations at neighborhood meetings.

“The SFMTA predicted issues and service delays in the summer of 2018,” she said. “Well, it’s summer, and all of a sudden we’re getting these accelerated complaints.”

With pressure mounting from City Hall, Haley appears sanguine. He said that the agency plans to recruit and train more drivers, and that it will soon convert 60 part-time drivers to full time.

Yet Marenco said the starting wage of $22.71 an hour for drivers is too low to attract and retain people, considering the cost of living in the Bay Area and all the abuse that comes with the job.

He ticked off a list of hazards and annoyances: street protests; Uber and Lyft drivers who pull into bus lanes; electric scooters that zig-zag through traffic; bicyclists who cut in front of buses; angry passengers who harass and sometimes assault drivers.

“It seems like everything that’s happening now is geared to make things more difficult for Muni drivers,” he said.

And since drivers serve as the face of Muni, “people believe we’re the ones causing the bus-run cuts and the delays in service,” he said. “But actually, it’s the agency that caused this debacle.”

A previous version of this story misstated the neighborhoods Supervisor Vallie Brown represents. The story has been altered to reflect this change.

Rachel Swan covers transportation for The Chronicle. She joined the paper in 2015 and has also reported on politics in Oakland and San Francisco.

Previously, Rachel held staff positions at the SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, where she covered technology, law and the arts. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley.